GIThruster wrote: Well look, you can certainly do as you like. I'm just telling you how science works. Science does not admit single testimony as cause to hold a factual matter as "fact".
I thought facts are always out there independent of the number of people who find them?
Scientific method requires repeatability as well as the repetitions that go along with, not just to document the method, but to verify the factual issues as "fact". Until there is such repetition, according to scientific method, you have "claims", not "facts".
So when does Nature know to change a claim into a fact? Yes that is the dogmatic theory behind science, but this has also been the downfall of science. If other scientists do not want to confirm a simple experimental fact since it does not suit their pre-ordained dogma, they will just not do so and people like you who only follow dogma without trying to understand the simple science involved then conclude that the facts have not been corrobrated and must therefore assumed not to be valid.
Your theory only works if the scientists involved have integrity. I have come to the conclusion that such people have mostly died out. At present when a scientist obtains a grant, he will ask the organisation: What are the results you want me to produce? Take the debate on climate change! With all due respect, under such circumstances your "philosophy" becomes childishly naive.
You'll find this in any 300 level Philosophy of Science text. Sadly, very few scientists and far fewer engineers ever have to read such a text, which is why I have to agree with the notion several above that most "scientists" are not scientists, because they don't understand what scientific method entails.
Unfortunately, I am of the opnion that you are so married to dogma that you cannot see the wood from the trees. Most text books on the Philosophy of Science I have read (and I have read many) I found to be removed from scientific reality.
In the case of statements concerning factual issues, fact requires validation by second and third parties.
The fact that an applied electric field can only be cancelled by an opposite polarisation field has been validated for two hundred years. I have found that when this happens within an element forming part of my circuit a current still flows around tyhe circuit even though, as had been validated for two hundred years, there is no net electric-field within the element. If you want to maintain that this does not prove superconduction, then tell me what else must I measure to prove superconduction?
And that's a fact!
According to your philosophy, yes: And in a non-corrupt world, maybe, yes. Even then it can turn out to be wrong.
